Taika Waititi’s Flash Gordon Movie No Longer Animated, Will Be Live-Action

Taika Waititi will bring the Flash Gordon back to live-action, as opposed to his original animated plans. As you may recall, back in June of 2019 Waititi was attached to develop an animated take in the 1970s sci-fi icon, with the possibility of him writing and directing. Now, producer Jon Davis tells Collider that the film is still happening, but it will take place in live-action with Waititi writing it.

“Taika is writing it,” Davis said. “It was a movie that was a huge influence on him growing up. It is one of his favorite movies. He initially said to me, ‘Let’s do it animated.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ Then we got into it and started developing it and he said, ‘No, let’s do it live-action.’ I said, ‘Even better.'”

Davis noted of the film that “He has the most fantastically interesting vision for this movie. And you can only know it is Taika. It is what he does. It is the way he looks at the world. He is the greatest guy in the world. He is the funniest guy in the world. And he thinks on a different plane. And this movie embraces everything that’s special about Taika, and his vision … It harkens in a very interesting way to the original conception from the comics.”

Waititi has been busy with the MCU in the past several years, wiring and directing Thor: Ragnarok as well as the upcoming Thor: Love & Thunder. Davis noted that Waititi is not yet on board to direct the film, but feels like he has an edge to get the director.

“Well, he’s writing it,” Davis said. “So when somebody writes a script that they’re going to direct, they’re obviously going to really like the script, right? So you get a big leg up, right? A lot of times, you go to a huge director with somebody else’s script and he’s got to reinvent it. They’ve got to make it their own. They’ve got to… whatever. This is going to be Taika-ready,” explained Davis, who has been planning this project for years. I’ve been talking to Taika about this movie since I first saw his Thor. He did this little movie in New Zealand that was just insane, that I loved… and that’s what got me interested in him,” recalled Davis. “We sat down just to talk in general. We went to a bar together with this guy, Matt Reilly, who was an executive at Fox. We started kicking around ideas. And so, this is six years in the making, right? So I’ve waited for him a lot, a lot, a lot of time, but his enthusiasm has remained steadfast. And only he’s going to be able to direct this movie because only he should direct this movie. It is special.”

The property was famously adapted in 1980 to a film starring Sam Jones and Max Von Sydow as Flash Gordon and his nemesis, Ming the Merciless. The property began as a comic strip in 1934, created and drawn by Alex Raymond as competition to Buck Rogers.